“What is it this time?” Keats had a leather jacket on over an undershirt, and he sounded sore.
Ellery told him, and they went in.
Delia Priam was going through the library desk, looking baffled. She was in a brown monkish negligee of some thick-napped material, girdled by a heavy brass chain. Her hair hung down her back and there were purplish shadows, almost welts, under her eyes. Alfred Wallace, in a Paisley dressing gown, was seated comfortably in a club chair, smoking a cigaret.
Delia turned, and Wallace rose, as the two men came into the library, but neither said anything.
Keats went directly to the only open window. He examined the sash about the catch without touching it.
“Jimmied. Have any of you touched this window?”
“I’m afraid,” said Wallace, “we all did.”
Keats mumbled something impolite and went out. A few moments later Ellery heard him outside, below the open window, and saw the beam of his flash.
Ellery looked around. It was the kind of library he liked; this was one room in which the prevailing Priam gloom was mellow. Leather shone, and the black oak paneling was a friendly background for the books. Books from floor to ceiling on all four walls, and a fieldstone fireplace with a used look. It was a spacious room, and the lamps were good.
“Nothing missing, Delia?”